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Slavery in the White Psyche : How Contemporary White Americans Remember and Making Meaning of Slavery : a Project Based Upon Independent Investigation

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Slavery in the White Psyche : How Contemporary White Americans Remember and Making Meaning of Slavery : a Project Based Upon Independent Investigation Smith ScholarWorks Theses, Dissertations, and Projects 2010 Slavery in the white psyche : how contemporary white Americans remember and making meaning of slavery : a project based upon independent investigation Ryan Nelson Parker Smith College Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.smith.edu/theses Part of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons Recommended Citation Parker, Ryan Nelson, "Slavery in the white psyche : how contemporary white Americans remember and making meaning of slavery : a project based upon independent investigation" (2010). Masters Thesis, Smith College, Northampton, MA. https://scholarworks.smith.edu/theses/1104 This Masters Thesis has been accepted for inclusion in Theses, Dissertations, and Projects by an authorized administrator of Smith ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Ryan Nelson Parker Slavery in the white psyche: How contemporary white Americans remember and make meaning of U.S. slavery ABSTRACT This qualitative study explored how contemporary white Americans remember and make meaning of U.S. slavery and assessed if there is psychological conflict in relationship to slavery. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 participants who identify as “white” and were born and raised in the United States. Participants were asked to reflect on their memories of learning about, talking about, and knowing about the history of slavery; to share their internal representations of slavery and how they imagine their familial, personal, and imagined relationship with slavery; to report their beliefs about the impact of slavery on themselves personally and on contemporary society; and to share their ideas about how slavery should be taught to children. The findings indicated that many contemporary white Americans have an intense and conflictual emotional and psychological relationship to U.S. slavery. Participants’ responses suggested that psychological defenses, such as denial and disavowal, are used to avoid intense feelings of shame and guilt associated with slavery. Another critical finding was the pervasive interpersonal silence around slavery among participants. This study indicates that slavery is an important site of white racialization and that talking about slavery is essential for the mourning process that all Americans must undergo if we are to mediate slavery’s pernicious legacy in the United States. SLAVERY IN THE WHITE PSYCHE: HOW CONTEMPORARY WHITE AMERICANS REMEMBER AND MAKE MEANING OF SLAVERY A project based upon independent investigation, submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Social Work. Ryan Nelson Parker Smith College School for Social Work Northampton, MA 01063 2010 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank you Nikhil Govind for your love and belief in me, and for literally holding my hand throughout this process. I want to thank my mom, Ann Nelson Parker, who amazed me with her engagement and profound support. Thanks to my dad, Red Parker, whose overheard story was the fire that lit this study. Thank you also to my brothers, Greg and Travis Parker. I am so thankful for the love and support of my dear friends, who have made this process one of community. Thank you to my thesis advisor, Alan Schroffel, whose steady guidance was indispensible. I have learned so much from the experience of working with you. I am deeply grateful to Robin DiAngelo who offered me her wisdom and embraced me with her passion all along the way, and to Beth Kita for being so excited and so generous with her time and spirit. I am deeply grateful to the white people who were willing to share parts of themselves never shared with another person. I am honored by their candor. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.......................................................................................... ii TABLE OF CONTENTS.............................................................................................. iii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION................................................................................................ 1 II LITERATURE REVIEW..................................................................................... 4 III METHODOLOGY............................................................................................... 46 IV FINDINGS ........................................................................................................... 51 V DISCUSSION....................................................................................................... 105 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................. 120 APPENDICES Appendix A: Recruitment Letter.................................................................................. 128 Appendix B: Human Subjects Review Approval Letter.............................................. 129 Appendix C: Informed Consent Letter ........................................................................ 130 Appendix D: Interview Schedule................................................................................. 132 Appendix E: Assurance of Research Confidentiality .................................................. 134 iii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION This study explores how contemporary white Americans remember and make meaning of U.S. slavery. The question this study aims to answer is: Do contemporary white Americans experience psychological conflict in relationship to slavery? As Kenneth Hardy (1996) asserts: “Slavery remains a deeply significant and untold story for all of us” (DVD). Slavery in the United States lasted for over three hundred years; it has been less than 150 years since it was legally abolished. The institutional, social, economic, and psychological residuals of slavery continue to profoundly impact and oppress black people and other groups of color. The violent and oppressive aftermath of slavery included the convict-lease system, the terror of lynchings, Jim Crow segregation, electoral disenfranchisement; and continues to include discriminatory housing policies, unequal educational and employment opportunities, increasing income disparity, and a criminal justice system and industrial prison complex that incarcerates black men at staggeringly disproportionate rates. Racism pervades all aspects of U.S. society. All contemporary white Americans have and continue to reap enormous material benefits and privileges via the racial hierarchy that was firmly established by slavery in this country. Despite the explosion of historical research on slavery that began in the 1970s and continues today, and a rich and growing body of scholarship within the social sciences that addresses the ongoing social, cultural, legal, economic, an psychological 1 consequences of slavery for black Americans, slavery is still thought of in the popular imagination as being black people’s history. How might contemporary white Americans recognize themselves in this history? Inspired by the current work of Kenneth Hardy and Joy DeGruy Leary who write on the psychological residuals of slavery for contemporary black people in the United States, and the burgeoning academic, psychoanalytic and psychodynamic studies of whiteness, this study aims to address the question that no known empirical research does: Do contemporary white Americans experience psychological conflict in relationship to slavery? Speaking to white people, Lazarre (1996) states, “We cannot erase centuries of slavery, discrimination, and bigotry, but we can begin the process of respectful, truthful remembering. For what sort of psychological distortion must take place in us in order “not to know” the reality of this immense subjugation?” (p. 133). This study explores an important aspect of that psychological distortion. What keeps contemporary white Americans from “knowing” that immense subjugation is inextricable from what keeps them from facing, mourning, and engaging in a reparative relationship with it. Slavery is deeply implicated in the “intergenerational transmission of trauma, including the traumatic construction of the self in acts of domination and the continuation of privilege and/or power [that] is a deep infrastructure of any white person’s life.” (Harris, 2007a, p. 892). Thomas Jefferson identified this traumatic construction of self in 1781. In Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson writes: The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do. […] The 2 parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to his worst of passions, and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances. (1781-1782, p. 289) Contemporary white Americans are the heirs of these white children. Over two hundred years ago the odious effects of slavery on white people was being considered, yet the level of denial today is such that it has been little explored. Fifteen participants, who identify as “white” and were born and raised in the United States, were interviewed
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